Friday, 30 June 2017

The Wonder of it All

Dearest Emily,
Well, just a couple more pictures to do, and it will be time to put them together as an exhibition. I thought, if you didn't mind, that I would print out my blog-posts to you to go next to each painting. It'll give people something to read as they walk down the corridor with the pictures up.
This picture is of a favourite view of mine- of Freshwater Bay and the High Down- as seen from the cliff near Compton. This is where Grumpa parked up the car one day, back in 2006, at sunset. We stood looking out as he cranked up the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing in the car - in particular, the track 'Wet Sands'. Apparently, he was plucking up the courage to ask me to marry him.
I guessed that, as we stood there together- but he didn't ask me then. But- he did a week later, so that's ok. This picture was at six in the evening, last Sunday.

This favourite view of mine, I know I share with many, and it has been so for hundreds of years.
Tennyson, arriving here, house-hunting with his new bride- saw Farringford Hall, and looking out of the window there at the reverse of this view (towards Blackgang Chine) declared that they had to have that view.
Nearly 100 years earlier, a Mr Richard Worseley wrote in his book about the Isle of Wight, that this vista was a 'Wonder of the World'.
I'm with both these bods, Em, and from the first time I set foot on the beach here with my Dad in 1967, to the time Peter and I alighted here in 2005, I too- have had to have that view, and I do consider this landscape a 'Wonder of the World.'
Tennyson's Monument crowns the High Down today, and Grumpa's ashes were spread as he wished out to sea beyond the Bay.
He said to me, that whenever I wanted to see him, I should go to the Bay-
"I shall be in the waves,
Sometimes choppy,
Sometimes calm,
But, I'll always be there for you."
A but like in life, really Em.
And that works for me, I come here, I look out to sea, the sun maybe setting, or rising, the water rough, or smooth, and rolling gently into the shore.
Food for the soul Emily dearest, and a true Wonder, at that.